The Cochrane Ranche Site (EhPo-37), the oldest commercial ranch in Alberta, is one of the earliest Post Contact period archaeological sites investigated after the Historical Resources Act came into law in Alberta in 1973.  Initial investigations at the site began in 1974 and continued through to the late 1970s with investigations focused on the Post Contact 1880s ranching period.  Subsequent investigations at the site in the 1990s and 2000s focused on the Precontact Period occupations at the site.  The latest work from 2018 to 2020 investigated the early to mid-twentieth century use of the site.  The history of the archaeological investigations at the Cochrane Ranche Site since the 1970s to present mirrors the changing and expanding priorities of CRM archaeology over that period, and the implications of this will be discussed.

In Alberta’s forestry sector, archaeological sites identified during Historical Resource Impact Assessments (HRIA) are typically flagged for avoidance, resulting in rare instances of excavation (HRIM) procedures being conducted. However, beginning with the 2022 field season, the largest mitigative forestry project on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains has been undertaken, as two sites (ElPu-28 and ElPv-5) were identified within a proposed right of way of a new logging haul road, and could not be avoided. This project offers a rare look into the significance shovel testing has on the interpretation of spatial data, regarding archaeological sites near Limestone Mountain. An overview and comparison between these two archaeological sites highlight the importance of understanding the potential bias of judgmental shovel tests, while providing further insights into the archaeological record and the cultural history of Indigenous Peoples residing in the eastern slopes of Alberta.

We utilize pXRF to source the oldest obsidian artifacts in Alberta. The province lacks obsidian outcrops: each archaeological site with obsidian (n=525) is indicative of long-distance human mobility. We summarize sourcing results from artifacts that inform human dispersal through the Late Pleistocene Ice-Free Corridor and across the Rocky Mountains as Alberta and British Columbia deglaciated through the Early Holocene. Results point to an early establishment of relationships in the central Ice-Free Corridor that reached into Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska. Alberta appears to have been entered principally by people from the south who had ties to the Pacific Northwest and Intermountain West. Limited evidence suggests that northern people from Beringia may have trickled south and admixed with southern populations in the central Corridor region. We discuss obsidian from western sources in British Columbia (Anahim Peak and Edziza) that arrived relatively quickly in northern and western Alberta.

Mitigative excavations undertaken at the Swan Creek Site (FaPs-14) in 2022 have resulted in the identification and interpretation of a small-scale Oxbow campsite situated within the Eastern Slopes region. In addition to the recovery of diagnostic artifacts and other lithic tools, microbotanical remains have been analysed from the site which provide a unique insight into the foodways of precontact peoples inhabiting the area. Details regarding the site identification and subsequent excavation, further information about the analyses undertaken on the recovered assemblage, and how the site can be interpreted relative to other Oxbow sites in the region, are discussed and presented.